The present invention relates to the field of keyboards for devices utilizing coded binary signals and particularly to a keyboard which is self-encoding.
Since the advent of data display and other types of systems devices utilizing binary codes representative of alphanumeric characters or control functions, a number of keyboard-connected systems have been devised to provide coded information, but all have had major disadvantages. Many of these systems have the costly disadvantage of requiring each character or function key to be unique in some way, and some of these systems cannot even utilize standard typewriter keyboard format and spacing. Systems which do use identical keys require elaborate switching and/or highly individualized wiring to produce the coded output signal. Typical instructions for keyboard encoders to be coupled to a keyboard read, "Use Truth Tables and required output codes to determine wiring from each key to the two Encoders". Some of these latter also require complex diode matrices to produce the coded output.